Texting While the Planet Burns: Smartphones and Climate Change

TODD LARSEN

Smartphones are a huge part of our lives.

We use them constantly for texts, social media, calls, directions, and finding information online. Even when we’re sleeping, they’re still active, receiving data all night.

But those little notifications we get on our phones have a surprisingly big environmental footprint. Keeping millions of people connected uses enormous amounts of energy, and most of that energy comes from fossil fuels.

AT&T and Verizon, the two largest telecommunication companies in the United States, use an incredible 26 million megawatts of energy per year, as much as 2.6 million households. And they get less than 2 percent of that energy from wind or solar power.

For their millions of customers, that means every call, text, or search we make is fueling climate change.

It doesn’t have to be that way. In the tech industry, leaders like Google and Apple are already at or near 100 percent power from renewable energy sources. Even Amazon, which isn’t known for its social responsibility, has a goal of reaching 100 percent renewable energy for its servers.

Sprint, a direct competitor to AT&T and Verizon, has a goal of reaching 10 percent renewable power this year.

It’s not a question of AT&T or Verizon denying climate change or its impacts. Both companies state that they take climate change seriously. Both have worked to reduce the amount of energy it takes to process data on their massive servers. As a result, even as data usage has grown tremendously, their overall energy usage has increased more slowly.

They’ve slowed the growth of the problem, and saved themselves money in the process. But they’re still using millions of megawatts of energy that directly fuel climate change.

Now is the ideal time for both companies to embrace a commitment to 100 percent clean energy. Clean energy is on the rise in the United States. There are 75,000 megawatts of wind power installed in the country, making up 5.4 percent of the power grid, with the projection to double by 2020 and reach 20 percent by 2030.

Last year, a record of 14,000 megawatts of new solar were installed, and 2018 will bring total U.S. solar installations up to 2 million units.

As clean energy sources grow, they’re getting much cheaper. If major companies like Apple can achieve 100 percent renewable energy across all data centers, we know that AT&T and Verizon can do the same.

It’s not a lack of money that’s holding them back. Both AT&T and Verizon are taking in over $120 billion in revenues per year. They spend millions upon millions of dollars on advertising to lure in new customers.

What’s missing is pressure from their customers to purchase greener energy options. Companies care about what their customers think. Consumers have pushed food companies to offer organic options. They’ve pushed toy manufacturers to remove unsafe chemicals like phthalates.

And they’ve gotten many tech companies to commit to 100 percent clean energy.

AT&T and Verizon need to hear from customers that a commitment to clean energy matters. And if enough of us take action and tell them to hang up on fossil fuels, they will. If they don’t, more and more customers might find themselves turning to Sprint.

Destructive Stock Buybacks–That You Pay For

Ralph Nader

The monster of economic waste—over $7 trillion of dictated stock buybacks since 2003 by the self-enriching CEOs of large corporations—started with a little noticed change in 1982 by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under President Ronald Reagan. That was when SEC Chairman John Shad, a former Wall Street CEO, redefined unlawful ‘stock manipulation’ to exclude stock buybacks.

Then after Clinton pushed through congress a $1 million cap on CEO pay that could be deductible, CEO compensation consultants wanted much of CEO pay to reflect the price of the company’s stock. The stock buyback mania was unleashed. Its core was not to benefit shareholders (other than perhaps hedge fund speculators) by improving the earnings per share ratio. Its real motivation was to increase CEO pay no matter how badly such burning out of shareholder dollars hurt the company, its workers and the overall pace of economic growth. In a massive conflict of interest between greedy top corporate executives and their own company, CEO-driven stock buybacks extract capital from corporations instead of contributing capital for corporate needs, as the capitalist theory would dictate.

Yes, due to the malicious, toady SEC “business judgement” rule, CEOs can take trillions of dollars away from productive pursuits without even having to ask the companies’ owners—the shareholders—for approval.

What could competent management have done with this treasure trove of shareholder money which came originally from consumer purchases? They could have invested more in research and development, in productive plant and equipment, in raising worker pay (and thereby consumer demand), in shoring up shaky pension fund reserves, or increasing dividends to shareholders.

The leading expert on this subject—economics professor William Lazonick of the University of Massachusetts—wrote a widely read article in 2013 in the Harvard Business Review titled “Profits Without Prosperity” documenting the intricate ways CEOs use buybacks to escalate their pay up to 300 to 500 times (averaging over $10,000 an hour plus lavish benefits) the average pay of their workers. This compared to only 30 times the average pay gap in 1978. This has led to increasing inequality and stagnant middle class wages.

To make matters worse, companies with excessive stock buybacks experience a declining market value. A study by Professor Robert Ayres and Executive Fellow Michael Olenick at INSEAD (September 2017) provided data about IBM, which since 2005 has spent $125 billion on buybacks while laying off large numbers of workers and investing only $69.9 billion in R&D. IBM is widely viewed as a declining company that has lost out to more nimble competitors in Silicon Valley.

The authors also cite General Electric, which in the same period spent $114.6 billion on its own stock only to see its stock price steadily decline in a bull market. In a review of 64 companies, including major retailers such as JC Penny and Macy’s, these firms spent more dollars in stock buybacks “than their businesses are currently worth in market value”!

On the other hand, Ayes and Olenick analyzed 269 companies that “repurchased stock valued at 2 percent or less of their current market value (including Facebook, Xcel Energy, Berkshire Hathaway and Amazon). They were strong market performers. The scholars concluded that “Buybacks are a way of disinvesting – we call it ‘committing corporate suicide’—in a way that rewards the “activists” (e.g. Hedge Funds) and executives, but hurts employees and pensioners.”

Presently, hordes of corporate lobbyists are descending on Washington to demand deregulation and tax cuts. Why, you ask them? In order to conserve corporate money for investing in economic growth, they assert. Really?! Why, then, are they turning around and wasting far more money on stock buybacks, which produce no tangible value? The answer is clear: uncontrolled executive greed!

By now you may be asking, why don’t the corporate bosses simply give more dividends to shareholders instead of buybacks, since a steady high dividend yield usually protects the price of the shares? Because these executives have far more of their compensation package in manipulated stock options and incentive payments than they own in stock.

Walmart in recent years has bought back over $50 billion of its shares – a move benefitting the Walton family’s wealth – while saying it could not afford to increase the meagre pay for over one million of their workers in the US. Last year the company bought back $8.3 billion of their stock which could have given their hard-pressed employees, many of whom are on welfare, a several thousand dollar raise.

The corporate giants are also demanding that Congress allow the repatriation of about $2.5 trillion stashed abroad without paying more than 5% tax. They say the money would be used to grow the economy and create jobs. Last time CEOs promised this result in 2004, Congress approved, and then was double-crossed. The companies spent the bulk on stock buybacks, their own pay raises and some dividend increases.

There are more shenanigans. With low interest rates that are deductible, companies actually borrow money to finance their stock buybacks. If the stock market tanks, these companies will have a self-created debt load to handle. A former Citigroup executive, Richard Parsons, has expressed worry about a “massively manipulated” stock market which “scares the crap” out of him.

Banks that pay you near zero interest on your savings announced on June 28, 2017 the biggest single buyback in history – a $92.8 billion extraction. Drug companies who say their sky-high drug prices are needed to fund R&D. But between 2006 and 2017, 18 drug company CEOs spent a combined staggering $516 billion on buybacks and dividends – more than their inflated claims of spending for R&D.

Mr. Olenick says “When managers can’t create value in the business other than buying their own stock, it seems like it’s time for a management change.”

Who’s going to do that? Shareholders stripped of inside power to control the company they own? No way. It will take Congressional hearings, a robust media focus, and the political clout of large pension and mutual funds to get the reforms under way.

When I asked Robert Monks, an author and longtime expert on corporate governance, about his reaction to CEOs heavy with stock buybacks, he replied that the management was either unimaginative, incompetent or avaricious – or all of these.

Essentially burning trillions of dollars for the hyper enrichment of a handful of radical corporate state supremacists wasn’t what classical capitalism was supposed to be about.

Ethiopia’s Economic Growth Hides Fear and Oppression in the One-Party State

Graham Peebles

Scan the mainstream media for news about Ethiopia and discover headline after headline describing the country’s economic successes: double-digit economic growth, foreign investment and aspirations to become a middle-income country by 2030. Ethiopia, we are told, is a functioning democracy, an African tiger economy and an important ally of Western governments.

According to such eminent sources as the BBC, CNN, the World Bank and the US State Department, Ethiopia is an African success story; a beacon of stability and growing prosperity in a region of dysfunctional states. Dig a little deeper, speak to Ethiopians inside the country or within the diaspora and a different, darker image surfaces: A violent picture of brutal state suppression, state corruption, widespread human rights violations and increasing levels of hardship as the cost of living escalates.

For a country to be regarded as broadly democratic a series of foundational pillars and interconnected principles are required to exist and be in operation: the observation of human rights, political pluralism, a flourishing independent media, an autonomous judiciary and police force, a vibrant civil society and a pervasive atmosphere of tolerance, inclusion and freedom. Where these are found to be absent so too is democracy.

The Ethiopian government – the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) maintains that it governs in accordance with democratic ideals: a brief overview of their methods however makes clear this is far from the truth. The EPRDF rules in a highly suppressive manner and has created an atmosphere of fear and suspicion throughout the country, employing a largely uneducated security apparatus to keep the increasingly mobilized populace in order, and a state-run judiciary to lock troublemakers away.

Political dissent is all but outlawed, and should protestors take to the streets they are shot at, beaten and/or arbitrarily arrested; opposition leaders are imprisoned, branded terrorists, intimidated and persecuted; all major media outlets as well as the sole telecommunications company are state owned or controlled — outspoken journalists are routinely jailed, trade unions are controlled by the government, and humanitarian aid, including food and fertilizer, is distributed on a partisan basis, as are employment opportunities and university places. Refuse to pledge allegiance to the EPRDF and see that job offer withdrawn, the seeds, fertilizer and humanitarian support withheld.

In justification of this tyrannical rule, the government states that Ethiopia is an evolving democracy, that change takes time and that economic growth is their primary concern and not the annoying niceties of universal human rights law, much of which is written into the liberally worded, systematically ignored constitution. And whilst the EPRDF commits wide-ranging human rights violations, and acts of state terrorism, the country’s major donors, America, Britain and the European Union, remain virtually silent. Indeed their irresponsible actions go beyond mere silence — they promote the fictitious image of democracy and stability in Ethiopia, and in some cases conspire with the regime against opposition party activists, as many believe the UK has done in the case of Tadesse Kersmo, a British citizen and leading member of the opposition party Ginbot 7 – Movement for Unity and Democracy in Ethiopia. He was recently arrested at Heathrow on vague terrorism charges, as well as Andargachew Tsege another British citizen. Tsege was kidnapped while transiting through Sanaan airport in Yemen, and rendered to Ethiopia as part of a brutal crackdown on political opponents and civil rights activists. He has been imprisoned inside Ethiopia ever since, and the British government, to their utter shame, has said little and done nothing.

Development aid from these and other benefactors, including the World Bank, flows through and supports “a virtual one-party state with a deplorable human rights record,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) states in its aptly named report, Development without Freedom. The Ethiopian government’s “practices include jailing and silencing critics and media, enacting laws to undermine human rights activity, and hobbling the political opposition.”

Who benefits?

In 1995 the then Prime Minister Meles Zenawi stated that the plan was for Ethiopia to “sustain current double-digit rates of growth for the next 15 years so that by 2025 we become a middle-income country.” And they would achieve this in a manner that would “allow us to have zero net carbon emissions by 2030.” Economic reforms and growth controlled by a highly centralized political system, mirroring, many have suggested, the methodology of China, is the EPRDF’s approach. It is largely Chinese money and organization that has built the new dams, roads and railways. Industrial parks have sprung up offering new jobs at increased wages, and the government plans to build another nine such facilities. But manufacturing is a tiny part of the country’s economy: almost 85% of the workforce is employed in agriculture, which accounts for 41% of GDP, coffee being the main export.

Certainly there have been some economic achievements over the past 25 years and the country’s carbon emissions during the period 1999 to 2012, have, according to the World Bank, remained static. This is indeed positive, as is the commitment to hydro, geothermal, wind and solar power. Overall unemployment has fallen slightly to 19.8% (from 2009 when it was 20.4%), but 50% of young people remain unemployed, and Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the famous ‘double-digit growth rates’, has been consistently high, averaging 11.35% in the years since 2010, according to Trading Economic, although this dropped to 8% in 2015/16. The UN relates that there has also been substantial progress in the achievement of Millennium Development Goals, particularly relating to those living in extreme poverty. This figure has fallen from 45% in 1995/6 to 30%.

Whilst these figures and the commitment of sustained investment are encouraging, no level of economic growth, green or otherwise, can justify violent, suppressive governance, as is being perpetrated in Ethiopia, and a nation’s GDP is only one measure of a country’s health, and a narrow one at that. It reveals nothing of the political landscape, the human rights conditions under which people are forced to live, the dire levels of poverty or where any new wealth has settled. Many claim ‘crony capitalism’ abounds in Ethiopia, that the principle beneficiaries of economic growth have been government members and close supporters and people from Tigray, the regional home of the majority of the government and senior members of the armed forces.

Desperate for change

With a population of almost 100 million, Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Africa after Nigeria. And with a population growth rate at a tad under 3% it’s growing apace (in the EU e.g. its 0.23%, the US 0.81%), meaning over the coming five years the country will have 25 million more people to feed.

The median age is a mere 17 years of age (44% are under 14), life expectancy is just 67 years of age (158th out of 198 countries) and the country (according to the US State Department) is still regarded as one of the 10 poorest nations in the world, with some of the lowest per capita income figures on the planet – just $590 (World Bank): it’s hard to live on $49 a month anywhere. The combination of low income, low life expectancy and poor education levels – only 39% of adults are literate and 85% of rural youth don’t complete primary school – means that Ethiopia is ranked 174th (of 198 countries) on the United Nations Human Development Index.

None of this, plus other stark details of daily life, the inflated cost of living for example, increased taxes, or the lowest level of Internet access in Africa – just 3.7%, is featured in the country’s routinely championed GDP figures. Headline numbers which mean nothing to the majority of people: most can barely feed themselves and their families, are increasingly angry at the level of state suppression and live in fear of government retribution should they dare to express dissent. As HRW correctly states, “visitors and diplomats alike are impressed with the double-digit economic growth, the progress on development indicators, and the apparent political stability. But in many ways, this is a smokescreen: many Ethiopians live in fear.”

Fear that has kept the people silent and cowering for years, but, encouraged by movements elsewhere, long-held frustration and anger spilled over in 2015 and 2016, when large-scale demonstrations erupted. Unprecedented demonstrations that followed hard on the heel of elections in May 2015, which, despite widespread discontent with the ruling party saw the EPRDF miraculously win 100% of the seats in both the federal and regional parliaments.

Thousands marched; firstly in the Oromia region than in parts of Amhara (areas that constitute the two largest ethnic groups in the country), until in October, after scores of people were killed in a stampede at Bishoftu in Oromia, a State of Emergency was announced by the ruling regime. Extreme measures of control were contained in the clampdown that lasted for 10 months. Draconian rules, which undermined the rights of free expression and peaceful assembly, and prohibited any association with groups labeled terrorist organizations, such as independent media stations, ESAT TV and Radio and the Oromia Media Network. Break the rules and face up to five years in jail, where torture is commonplace.

HRW made clear that the Directive, which was lifted in August, went “far beyond what is permissible under international human rights law,” and “signaled a continuation of the militarized response” that characterized the government’s reaction to people’s legitimate grievances, peacefully expressed. Tens of thousands of protestors, including opposition party leaders, were arrested and detained without due process. Hundreds of people killed, many more beaten by security forces that act with total impunity. None of this is contained in the World Bank data, the IMF forecasts or the BBC news headlines, nor is the state terrorism taking place in the Ogaden region and elsewhere, where murder and false imprisonment of pastoralists is routine and women tell of multiple rapes at the hands of soldiers and the quasi Para-military group the Liyu Police.

Ethiopia desperately needs a renaissance, true development built on a firm foundation of human rights, inclusion and political pluralism. Human development that caters to the needs of all its citizens, not economic growth based on a prescribed outdated, unjust economic model, which inevitably benefits a few, strengthens inequality and fosters corruption.

Far from building a democratic society in which freedoms are observed and valued, an atmosphere of fear, suspicion, and inhibition has been cultivated by the EPRDF government, a brutal regime that is determined to maintain power, no matter the cost to the people of Ethiopia, the vast majority of whom are desperate for democratic change.

How Big Pharma and Big Food Have Made Us Fat and Sick

Martha Rosenberg

How do you launch a “disease” created for no other purpose than to sell drugs that are supposed to treat it?

* Issue a press release about how it is an “under-recognized” disease with many “barriers” and “stigmas” to treatment.

* Launch a TV campaign to “raise awareness” about the disease’s symptoms and risks factors to help “sufferers” in the general public self-diagnose

* Create a website with a quiz for people to determine if they have the disease and a script for them to take to the doctor to be prescribed the intended drug

* Hire doctors to warn people that the disease is progressive and silent and will only get worse if they ignore it and don’t seek treatment.

* Create patient front groups to lobby the FDA to approve expensive drugs for the disease and to lobby insurers to not substitute a lower cost drug

* Plant articles in respectable medical journals about the hidden costs of the under-recognized disease in hospitalizations and quality of life of sufferers which total more than the cost of insurers buying the drug itself.

* Develop a second drug that sufferers need to add to the first drug to boost its performance, either because the first drug doesn’t work or the people never had the disease in the first place.

How Do You Produce Food That Fattens and Sickens Instead of Nourishes?

* Use taxpayer money. to market unhealthy food directly to consumers to help Agribiz, ignoring the government’s duty to protect public health.

* Dump unhealthy food into the School Lunch and other government programs where food consumers have little choice, also to help Agribiz.

* Pay dietitians to concoct protein, milk or nutrient “deficiencies” in children and the general public to unload the unhealthy food.

* Protect the identity of farms producing contaminated products and abusing workers, animals, and the environment (usually the same farms).

* Refuse to prosecute perpetrator farms, except for slaps on the wrist, and never shut them down which would be anti-industry.

* Strip federal food inspectors of power to enforce laws, stop assembly lines and report violations, making them pathetic figureheads who are openly ridiculed by plant managers.

* Remind the public to wash its hands after handling raw food because food safety is their responsibility and federal food inspectors can’t catch everything.

* Outlaw food labels that reveal production methods, dangerous ingredients or genetic engineering associated with a product so consumers can’t make informed purchasing choices.

Despite the wonder of Western medicine, the United States has some of the sickest people in the world, thanks to direct-to-consumer advertising—and most of it is self-diagnosed.

We “suffer” from seasonal allergies, asthma, seasonal affective disorder, social anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, erectile dysfunction, irritable bowel syndrome, dry eye, fibromyalgia, insomnia, migraines, mood disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, spectrum disorders, chronic fatigue, restless legs, excessive daytime sleepiness, osteopenia, perimenopause, and lactose intolerance. Many of the new diseases are “imbalances” from a “deficiency” of a drug that Big Pharma makes and we will need them for the rest of our lives, says the marketing.

In addition to taking drugs for diseases (and deficiencies) that barely existed before drug ads, we take drugs to prevent diseases we don’t even have, like thinning bones and cardiovascular diseases.

And despite the wonders of the Western diet, the United States has the least fit people in the world. We develop high cholesterol, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, obesity, diabetes, heartburn, gastroesophageal and reflux disease from junk food–and aching backs, painful joints, poor circulation and sleep apnea from the extra weight it causes. Drugs we’re already taking for “deficiency” diseases add to the obesity and we treat with more drugs for metabolism like statins, “purple pills,” and blood sugar–lowering pills. The food leads us to drugs and the drugs lead us to food, in a vicious cycle.

The TV “teleprompter” telling us to eat junk food is not the only cause of our national obesity. Super sizing, free refills and all-you-can-eat buffets encourage people to get their money’s worth at the price of their waistlines. The family meal, where we learned portion control and restraint, is a dying cultural icon. Size inflation, in which women who were size sevens are now size zeros through no effort of their own, furthers adipose denial. And baggy and low rider urban fashions seldom “don’t” fit.

And there is the ubiquity of snacks themselves. Once upon a time snacks weren’t available in banks, bookstores, body shops, hardware stores and hospitals. When some Europeans visiting a US mall saw people in the “food court,” eating cheese fries at 10:30 in the morning, they asked, “What meal is that?” Good question.

When you consider the toll that cheap food and drugs take on the public health, it is obvious that there is nothing “cheap” about them. The billions that Big Food and Big Pharma make are simply transferred to the cost of treating a nation with chronic, expensive-to-treat and often preventable diseases.

In fact, the junk food and drugs “deficiencies” we’re said to suffer from bring to mind the 1953 song, sung by Burl Ives, “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.”After swallowing a fly, the old lady swallows increasingly larger animals to catch the previously swallowed animal. She swallows a spider to catch the fly, a bird to catch the spider, a cat to catch the bird, a dog to catch the cat, and so on. Every time she swallows a larger animal, the absurdity of her first act is repeated in the chorus: “I don’t know why she swallowed the fly, perhaps she’ll die.” And, in the end, she does. It sounds a lot like US consumers in the age of aggressive junk food and drug advertising.

Torture, the London Police and the Middle East

Robert Fisk

The Metropolitan Police in London will in a few hours’ time find themselves involved in the Gulf crisis when UK lawyers for three prominent Qataris submit their evidence of alleged torture and illegal imprisonment for which they blame up to 10 senior officials of the United Arab Emirates – including a cabinet minister and a high-ranking security adviser.

Human Rights lawyer Rodney Dixon QC will hand the Met details of alleged beatings, torture and illegal imprisonment of the three Qataris, one of them close to the head of Qatar’s own State Security Service, under the terms of the 1988 Criminal Justice Act – which allows British police to investigate and arrest foreign nationals entering the UK if they are suspected of war crimes, torture or hostage-taking anywhere in the world.

Prime Minister Theresa May, who only a few weeks ago decided to keep secret a British police report on “terrorist funding” for fear it would upset Saudi Arabia, will no doubt be infuriated to discover that the Metropolitan Police are now being asked to investigate the alleged “crimes” of senior officials in the Emirates – one of Saudi Arabia’s closest allies in the dispute with Qatar.

One of the three Qataris was repeatedly accused of being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the very Islamist group that the Saudis have accused Qatar of supporting. According to the same man – the one associated with the Qatar secret police – he was beaten and electrocuted and held in solitary confinement for almost a year.

Section 134 of the Criminal Justice Act – which cannot be May’s favourite piece of legislation – effectively allows the police or UK border agencies to question anyone, including wealthy Arab dignitaries visiting Britain on holiday, about torture and war crimes committed abroad. Cynics might suggest that the Qataris wish to embarrass their Emirati brothers during the expensive political crisis which principally involves Saudi Arabia and Qatar. And such cynics may be right. The Saudis have demanded that Qatar end its “funding” of “terrorism”, close down the international Al Jazeera television station and break off relations with Iran. As almost all Arabs will tell you, this crisis – which is somewhat contrived since Donald Trump, in his wisdom, is selling billions of dollars of weapons to both Saudi Arabia and Qatar – is about Iran and about the Sunni Arab world’s desire to crush Iranian Shiite power in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

The US President has – during moments of both clarity and insanity – supported the Saudi policy against Iran, one which is also enthusiastically endorsed by Israel. This week’s attempt to bring the Met into the politics of the Middle East may thus be seen in this highly toxic context. But stripped of its legal, and supposedly criminal aspects, however, the whole affair also says as much about the brazen relationships between Arab Gulf states as it does about the humane standards of secret police interrogation boasted by those who protect the emirs and potentates of the region.

I understand, for example, that after the original arrest of the three Qataris – one of them at Dubai airport, two others while crossing the Saudi land border into the Emirates – their imprisonment and alleged torture between 2013 and 2015 was well known to the Qatari authorities who preferred to try and resolve the matter without publicity. The senior Qatari security agent, I gather, was accused of bringing espionage equipment into the Emirates. Two of the three men made “confessions” on police videotape long before their release in May 2015 after being told they would be freed if they did so. These “confessions” were made after the men say they were subjected to prolonged torture, including the use of electricity and being hung upside down by their interrogators.

And there the matter might have ended – if the inter-Arab squabble between Saudi Arabia and Qatar had not broken out this summer and if the Emirati authorities had not then broadcast the police “confessions” of two of the three Qataris. If they now seek to clear their names and expose the ordeal of their alleged imprisonment and torture – as, I gather, they will in London this week – it would be interesting to know why they did not take this step when they were released more than two years ago. They claim that the “confessions” were tortured out of them.

As for the poor old Met, no one would dispute that when constabulary duty’s to be done – even under Section 134 – a policeman’s lot is not a happy one. And there are indeed times when inter-Arab politics – even without Trump’s appearance – might be better illustrated in the form of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. And this would be true if torture and solitary confinement was not the bedrock of every Arab state in the entire Middle East.

The Russia-China Plan for North Korea: Stability, Connectivity

Pepe Escobar

The United Nations Security Council’s 15-0 vote to impose a new set of sanctions on North Korea somewhat disguises the critical role played by the Russia-China strategic partnership, the “RC” at the core of the BRICS group.

The new sanctions are pretty harsh. They include a 30% reduction on crude and refined oil exports to the DPRK; a ban on exports of natural gas; a ban on all North Korean textile exports (which have brought in US$760 million on average over the past three years); and a worldwide ban on new work permits for DPRK citizens (there are over 90,000 currently working abroad.)

But this is far from what US President Donald Trump’s administration was aiming at, according to the draft Security Council resolution leaked last week. That included an asset freeze and travel ban on Kim Jong-un and other designated DPRK officials, and covered additional “WMD-related items,” Iraqi sanctions-style. It also authorized UN member states to interdict and inspect North Korean vessels in international waters (which amounts to a declaration of war); and, last but not least, a total oil embargo.

“RC” made it clear it would veto the resolution under these terms. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the US’ diminishing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Moscow would only accept language related to “political and diplomatic tools to seek peaceful ways of resolution.” On the oil embargo, President Vladimir Putin said, “cutting off the oil supply to North Korea may harm people in hospitals or other ordinary citizens.”

“RC” priorities are clear: “stability” in Pyongyang; no regime change; no drastic alteration of the geopolitical chessboard; no massive refugee crisis.

That does not preclude Beijing from applying pressure on Pyongyang. Branch offices of the Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Agricultural Bank of China in the northeastern border city of Yanji have banned DPRK citizens from opening new accounts. Current accounts are not frozen yet, but deposits and remittances have been suspended.

To get to the heart of the matter, though, we need to examine what happened last week at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok – which happens to be only a little over 300 km away from the DPRK’s Punggye-ri missile test site.

It’s all about the Trans-Korean Railway

In sharp contrast to the Trump administration and the Beltway’s bellicose rhetoric, what “RC” proposes are essentially 5+1 talks (North Korea, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, plus the US) on neutral territory, as confirmed by Russian diplomats. In Vladivostok, Putin went out of his way to defuse military hysteria and warn that stepping beyond sanctions would be an “invitation to the graveyard.” Instead, he proposed business deals.

Largely unreported by Western corporate media, what happened in Vladivostok is really ground-breaking. Moscow and Seoul agreed on a trilateral trade platform, crucially involving Pyongyang, to ultimately invest in connectivity between the whole Korean peninsula and the Russian Far East.

South Korean Prime Minister Moon Jae-in proposed to Moscow to build no less than “nine bridges” of cooperation: “Nine bridges mean the bridges of gas, railways, the Northern Sea Route, shipbuilding, the creation of working groups, agriculture and other types of cooperation.”

Crucially, Moon added that the trilateral cooperation would aim at joint projects in the Russian Far East. He knows that “the development of that area will promote the prosperity of our two countries and will also help change North Korea and create the basis for the implementation of the trilateral agreements.”

Adding to the entente, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono and South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha both stressed “strategic cooperation” with “RC”.

Geo-economics complements geo-politics. Moscow has also approached Tokyo with the idea of building a bridge between the nations. That would physically link Japan to Eurasia – and the vast trade and investment carousel offered by the New Silk Roads, aka, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). It would also complement the daring plan to link a
Trans-Korean Railway to the Trans-Siberian one.

Seoul wants a rail network that will physically connect it with the vast Eurasian land bridge, which makes perfect business sense for the fifth largest export economy in the world. Handicapped by North Korea’s isolation, South Korea is in effect cut off from Eurasia by land. The answer is the Trans-Korean Railway.

Moscow is very much for it, with Putin noting how “we could
deliver Russian pipeline gas to Korea and integrate the power lines and railway systems of Russia, the Republic of Korea and North Korea. The implementation of these initiatives will be not only economically beneficial, but will also help build up trust and stability on the Korean Peninsula.”

Moscow’s strategy, like Beijing’s, is connectivity: the only way to integrate Pyongyang is to keep it involved in economic cooperation via the Trans-Korean-Trans-Siberian connection, pipelines and the development of North Korean ports.

The DPRK’s delegation in Vladivostok seemed to agree. But not yet. According to North Korea’s Minister for External Economic Affairs, Kim Yong Jae: “We are not opposed to the trilateral cooperation [with Russia and South Korea], but this is not an appropriate situation for this to be implemented.” That implies that for the DPRK the priority is the 5+1 negotiation table.

Still, the crucial point is that both Seoul and Pyongyang went to Vladivostok, and talked to Moscow. Arguably the key question – the armistice that did not end the Korean War – has to be broached by Putin and the Koreans, without the Americans.

While the sanctions game ebb and flows, the larger strategy of “RC” is clear – a drive aimed at Eurasian connectivity. The question is how to convince the DPRK to play along.

Racial Inequality Is Hollowing Out America’s Middle Class

Dedrick Asante-Muhammed & Chuck Collins

America’s middle class is under assault.

Since 1983, national median wealth has declined by 20 percent, falling from $73,000 to $64,000 in 2013. And U.S. homeownership has been in a steady decline since 2005.

While we often hear about the struggles of the white working class, a driving force behind this trend is an accelerating decline in black and Latino household wealth.

Over those three decades, the wealth of median black and Latino households decreased by 75 percent and 50 percent, respectively, while median white household wealth actually rose a little. As of 2013, median whites had $116,800 in wealth — compared to just $2,000 for Latinos and $1,700 for blacks.

This wealth decline is a threat to the viability of the American middle class and the nation’s overall economic health. Families with more wealth can cover emergencies without going into debt and take advantage of economic opportunity, such as buying a home, saving for college, or starting a business.

We looked at the growing racial wealth gap in a new report for the Institute for Policy Studies and Prosperity Now.

Kenneth Worles, Jr. / Institute for Policy Studies

We found that if these appalling trends continue, median black household wealth will hit zero by 2053, even while median white wealth continues to climb. Latino net worth will hit zero two decades later, according to our projections.

It’s in everyone’s interest to reverse these trends. Growing racial wealth inequality is bringing down median American middle class wealth, and with it shrinking the middle class — especially as Americans of color make up an increasing share of the U.S. population.

The causes of this racial wealth divide have little to do with individual behavior. Instead, they’re the result of a range of systemic factors and policies.

These include past discriminatory housing policies that continue to fuel an enormous racial divide in homeownership rates, as well as an “upside down” tax system that helps the wealthiest households get wealthier while providing the lowest income families with almost nothing.

The American middle class was created by government policy, investment, and the hard work of its citizenry. Today Americans are working as hard as ever, but government policy is failing to invest in a sustainable and growing middle class.

To do better, Congress must redirect subsidies to the already wealthy and invest in opportunities for poorer families to save and build wealth.

For example, people can currently write off part of their mortgage interest payments on their taxes. But this only benefits you if you already own a home — an opportunity long denied to millions of black and Latino families — and benefits you even more if you own an expensive home. It helps the already rich, at the expense of the poor.

Congress should reform that deduction and other tax expenditures to focus on those excluded from opportunity, not the already have-a-lots.

Other actions include protecting families from the wealth stripping practices common in many low-income communities, like “contract for deed” scams that can leave renters homeless even after they’ve fronted money for expensive repairs to their homes. That means strengthening institutions like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The nation has experienced 30 years of middle class decline. If we don’t want this to be a permanent trend, then government must respond with the boldness and ingenuity that expanded the middle class after World War Two — but this time with a racially inclusive frame to reflect our 21st century population.

Profiteering in War: the Case Against Mercenaries

L. Michael Hager

Opening the August 30 New York Times, I was surprised (and personally appalled) to find Erik Prince on the opinion page with his own by-lined article (“Contractors, Not Troops, Will Save Afghanistan”). While Prince is entitled to his opinion, it seemed to me his former role as head of Blackwater should have denied him the privilege of expressing it from the vaulted platform of the NYT.

Taking issue with the Prince op-ed, I maintain that the U.S. military should never hire mercenaries, whether directly or through Blackwater-type firms since contract soldiers have a vested interest in prolonging a war.  Their private employers, investors, and lobbyists have a similar interest in advocating pro-war policies in the halls of Congress.

Enriched by a succession of lucrative government security contracts and serving for years as a CIA lackey, Prince’s security company Blackwater earned opprobrium for its high-handed aggressiveness in Iraq as it escorted government VIPs around Baghdad and beyond.  Repeated abuses of Iraqi pedestrians and motorists came to a head when four Blackwater employees opened fire in a crowded square in Baghdad in 2007, killing 17 and wounding 20.  Prince defended his security force but sold the company in 2010.

Now Prince would elevate the role of the private contractor from security to actual combat. His op-ed envisions a “contractor force of less than 6,000 (far less than the 26,000 in the country now)” that would “provide a support structure for the Afghans, allowing the United States’ conventional forces to return home.” All this sounds attractive, but why would such “former Special Operations veterans” be expected to accomplish on the battlefield what U.S. Special Ops cannot?

In a 2007 Brookings article (“The Dark Truth about Blackwater”), Peter W. Singer concluded that the “massive outsourcing of military operations,” creating a dependency on private firms like Blackwater, has given rise to “dangerous vulnerabilities.”  He went on to cite the firm’s cutting corners “that may have contributed to employee deaths,” the classification of documents “to cover up corporate failures,” and public relations fiascos that have diverted the attention of military planners and shamed America.  As to costs, Singer questioned whether firms like Blackwater really save the taxpayer money.

A more serious objection to outsourcing soldiers lies in its bypassing of citizen scrutiny.  As opposed to the deployment of more troops or the call-up of National Guard and Reserves, the hiring of contract forces lies beneath the public radar screen. Even in its more limited “bodyguard” role, the private military industry has become, according to Singer, “the ultimate enabler, allowing operations to happen that might otherwise be politically impossible.”

As with Blackwater in Iraq, military contractors often create a negative image of America.  Disrespect of and assault on ordinary civilians were frequent complaints against Blackwater in Iraq. With direct government control lacking, private contractors take orders from their corporate bosses, who in turn respond to investor preoccupation with the “bottom line.”

Corruption is another reason to limit contractor roles in warfare.  In addition to the contributions and gift travel that military industry lobbyists shower on lawmakers in an effort to win contracts, there is corruption in contractor procurement practices.  According to Singer, the Defense Contract Audit Agency identified “a staggering $10 billion in unsupported or questionable costs from battlefield contractors” in Iraq.

Many of the same objections can be laid against private prison operators, where an inherent conflict of interest divides contract employee loyalty between government and the corporate bosses who pay their salaries.  In war, the military industry profits from continuing conflict, while in peace, private prison companies profit from occupied cell blocks and minimal operating costs.  Without government control and civilian oversight, both military and prison contractors tend to skimp on support costs and resort to abuse.

Private military/security companies and private prison companies have in common the vulnerabilities of conflict of interest, corruption, policy distortion and lack of transparency.  To remain the guarantor of the public interest, the U.S. government should beware of contracting out its military, security (and prison) functions.

90 Companies Helped Cause the Climate Crisis

Sarah van Gelder

Pacific Northwest forests are on fire. Several blazes are out of control, threatening rural towns, jumping rivers and highways, and covering Portland, Oregon, Seattle, and other cities in smoke and falling ash. Temperatures this summer are an average of 3.6 degrees higher than the last half of the 20th century, according to the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group analysis published in The Seattle Times.

Fire crews have been battling fires for months. In spite of all the effort, though, officials expect the fires to continue burning until major rains come sometime this fall. Meanwhile, firefighting coffers are running dry as costs run into the hundreds of millions.

The scale and costs of these disasters pale in comparison to the impacts of hurricanes Harvey and Irma: Accuweather is estimating the combined cost of these unprecedented storms at $290 billion. (Then there is the flooding in India and Bangladesh—less noted in U.S. news media—where 40 million were affected and 1,200 died.)

What these disasters have in common is that they are all exactly the sort predicted by climate models—and they will get terrifyingly worse over coming years.

So who will cover the costs? Who will pay for the first responders, for sheltering and relocating climate refugees, and for rebuilding homes, businesses, and infrastructure?

Our planet is quickly getting hotter, more volatile, and more dangerous. But Republicans are working to cut nearly $1 billion from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and to give large corporations and the wealthy a big tax break. So who should pay for the climate disasters?

A report published in early September by the journal Climatic Change helps pinpoint a possible answer. According to the report, 90 companies are responsible for 42 to 50 percent of the increase in the Earth’s surface temperature and 26 to 32 percent of sea level rise.

Some say we are all to blame for the climate crisis—at least all of us who get around in cars and planes. But there are reasons these 90 companies owe a major debt to the entire planet.

First, many of them knew what damage they were causing. According to the report, more than half of the carbon emissions produced since the industrial revolution were emitted since 1986, when the dangers of global warming were well-known. But these companies buried their own research findings and doubled down on fossil fuel extraction.

Second, many of these companies spend vast sums promoting climate denial and undermining support for renewable energy, electric vehicles, and other responses to the climate crisis. Industry lobbyists and think tanks, flush with money from fossil fuel companies and their executives, distort our democracy, making government accountable to their interests rather than to We the People.

Third, by doing these things, these companies prevented action during the brief window of time between climate science becoming clear and it becoming too late to avert disaster.

Now we are very short on time. This year’s fires and floods are just the beginning. But we can still make choices that would curb catastrophic outcomes. To make that difference, we need an all-out effort now on all fronts—in agriculture, transportation, and energy generation, conservation, and efficiency upgrades. That will take a lot of money.

A good place to start would be requiring those who caused the climate catastrophe to pay. The 90 companies could start by helping families and communities recover from the floods, wind damage, and fires, and helping homeowners and cities everywhere build resilience for withstanding the effects of future disasters. But they shouldn’t stop there. The companies that are responsible for the damage should pay their share for the transition to a carbon-free future.

There is a precedent for this. Tobacco companies too had been hiding and dismissing the evidence that their product caused massive damage. Big Tobacco and Big Oil even hired some of the same scientists and public relations firms to obscure the damage their industries were causing, according to ClimateWire. The 1998 tobacco settlement of lawsuits brought by nearly every U.S. state required the major tobacco companies to pay over $200 billion toward the increased cost of health care resulting from smoking and for prevention education.

There are far more victims of the fossil fuel industries’ deception—billions of people today, future generations, and many other species.

We’ve got a precedent, we’ve got a dire need, and we have clearly defined culprits.

Anti-Chinese witch-hunt against New Zealand MP

Tom Peters

On Wednesday, just 10 days before New Zealand’s general election, the UK-based Financial Times and NZ media outlet Newsroom published extraordinary allegations that National Party government MP Jian Yang had been investigated on suspicion of being a Chinese “agent.”

Anonymous sources said Yang, a New Zealand citizen who moved to the country in 1999 and has spent six years in parliament, was investigated by the Security Intelligence Service (SIS). The publications further alleged that “security questions” were raised when Yang studied at the Australian National University in the mid-1990s. No actual evidence was presented that Yang is a spy.

Yang denounced the articles as a “smear campaign” aimed at damaging the ruling National Party in the election. China’s foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the allegations were “fake news” fabricated “out of thin air.”

New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English told the media on Wednesday he had been aware of Yang’s military background, which was not a secret. Before leaving China, Yang studied and lectured at the People’s Liberation Army Air Force Engineering College and the University of Foreign Languages in Luoyang, part of the Third Department of the PLA, one of China’s military intelligence agencies. Yang said he taught English to cadets in Luoyang and was a civilian officer in the PLA.

Yang is the latest target in a witch-hunt, in countries allied with the United States, against people accused of being Chinese “agents.” The Times noted that Canada’s intelligence agency had warned in 2010 about Chinese “agents of influence” in provincial governments. Similar allegations were revived and widened this year by the Australian media and intelligence agencies against politicians, business figures and students. New Zealand, Canada and Australia are members of the US-led Five Eyes intelligence network.

This international McCarthyite campaign is bound up with US preparations for war against China, begun during President Barack Obama’s administration and accelerated by Donald Trump. Washington sees China as the major obstacle to US domination over the Asia-Pacific region and is seeking to roll back Beijing’s diplomatic and economic influence. The US military has vastly increased its presence in Asia and staged numerous provocative exercises near Chinese-claimed waters in the South China Sea, while hypocritically denouncing Chinese “expansionism” in the region. Trump has called for trade war measures against China and threatened a nuclear war against its ally North Korea.

The Financial Times wrote that Yang’s position in New Zealand’s parliament “raises questions about western preparedness to deal with China’s increasingly aggressive efforts to influence foreign governments and spy on them.” The implication that Yang is a spy was backed up by sources close to the US government.

Christopher Johnson, a former CIA analyst now with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a prominent US think tank, told the paper that Beijing sees New Zealand as a “softer target” for infiltration than the US or Britain and could be using it “as a testing ground for future operations in other countries.”

Peter Mattis from the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based think tank whose directors include retired US generals and national security advisors, told the Financial Times Yang was likely to have “been in Chinese military intelligence or at least linked to that system.”

The attack on Yang in the lead-up to the election is clearly intended to shift the politics of New Zealand and other countries into closer alignment with the US drive to war.

Successive Labour and National Party governments in New Zealand have strengthened military ties with the US, joined the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and collaborated with operations against China. According to leaks by Edward Snowden, New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau shares vast amounts of intelligence with the US National Security Agency and has spied directly on China on behalf of the US.

Prime Minister English has said he would consider joining a war against North Korea, something Labour also has not ruled out.

However, the National government so far has been reluctant to denounce China as an “aggressive” or “expansionist” power, as the Australian government and other US allies have done. On September 8, Foreign Minister Gerry Brownlee told the New Zealand Herald the US was “a very, very good friend of New Zealand but equally China is a very, very good friend of New Zealand.”

China is New Zealand’s second-largest trading partner. Yang, who sits on the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, has played a significant role in promoting closer relations between the two countries.

Among the broader population there is widespread opposition to Trump’s war-mongering and the military-intelligence alliance with the US. A survey published in June of 34,000 people by Fairfax Media and Massey University found that “when asked to choose between building closer bilateral relations with the US, the UK and China, only 15.6 percent chose the US.” By contrast, “China came out tops, with 42.5.”

The opposition parties, led by the Labour Party, supported by much of the media, are pushing for a more overt anti-China stance and are seeking to shift public opinion by whipping up nationalism and xenophobia.

Labour, the Greens, the right-wing populist NZ First Party and the Maori nationalist Mana Party have denounced the government’s close business links with China. They have scapegoated immigrants, especially Chinese people, for the lack of affordable housing, low wages, the drugs epidemic and other aspects of the social crisis that is the product of decades of cutbacks and austerity measures. Labour is calling for immigrant numbers to be cut by 30,000, more than 40 percent.

Labour and NZ First also have called for greater spending to upgrade the military to ensure “interoperability” with US forces.

Labour Party leader Jacinda Ardern refused to comment on the allegations against Yang. NZ First leader Winston Peters, however, said he was told by a Labour Party source that Yang was “a spy.” Peters said he believed Labour leaked to the media information about the SIS investigation into Yang. Peters, whose party was founded on a platform of opposing Asian immigration, later tweeted: “National has been caught out. And New Zealand has been left exposed to being a pawn of the Communists in China.”

Reflecting the reactionary nationalism of the trade unions, the union-funded Daily Blog joined the chauvinist campaign. Its editor Martyn Bradbury declared that National was “wedded and compromised personally to wealthy Chinese interests” and voters “have to ask some hard questions about where National’s loyalties actually lie.”

Unions such as Unite, the Tertiary Education Union, E Tu and the First Union have all joined NZ First over the past year in accusing migrant workers and students of putting pressure on jobs, housing, infrastructure and educational institutions. The Council of Trade Unions has endorsed calls to restrict immigration.

As the witch-hunt against Yang underscores, if Labour and its allies are elected they will escalate the attacks on Chinese immigrants and preparations to join a US war against China.